Grand Traverse Region

Common Sense for the Common GoodVol. 1 No. 1

CALENDULAAT WORK IN THE GARDEN

By Zane Kathryne Schwaiger

I must find a man who still loves the soilWalk by his side unseen, pour in his mindWhat I loved when I lived until he buildsSows, reaps, and covers these hill pastures hereWith sheep and cattle, mows the meadowlandGrafts the old orchard again, makes it bear againKnowing that we are lost if the land does not yield.

-Jeanne Robert Foster

“

Permaculture ProgressSummer 2014

The first time we planted calendula, our choice of seeds was almost unintentional. After harvesting gar-lic in early July, we had a whole garden bed’s worth of open earth, and so I went rummaging through our basket of leftover seed packets, looking for the begin-nings of a fall garden. I picked out everything with relatively few “days to germination.” It was our first of-ficial fall garden, and my husband Jeffrey and I plant-ed a lot of things that didn’t do well. But the calendula flowers thrived. The plants grew lush and green and then the buds opened and bloomed well into autumn — even bouncing back after the first few frosts.

On a late October morning, I went outside looking for some color to bring indoors. Few things were left blooming in the garden, but the calendula flowers still smiled up at me, so I picked a bunch to put in a vase. It wasn’t until then, when I noticed a slightly sticky resin on my fingertips, that I realized what we were growing. The makings of calendula salve! All those weeks of lovely blooms — and how did I not realize what trea-sure was growing in our own soil?

I had purchased calendula salve for years: for my growing pregnant belly; for our little babies; for our girls when they were toddlers with bee stings and mos-

quito bites; and for our hands weathered from garden work. But until this moment, it had not occurred to me to make my own.

With my hands still slightly sticky, I looked up a rec-ipe and was delighted to discover that making calen-dula salve was much easier than I’d imagined. What was more, I happened to have all of the ingredients on hand. The only thing we would need to add was a little bit of time (petals soak in olive oil for two weeks). Eagerly, my daughters and I gathered all the calendula petals left in the garden. We dried and soaked them. And finally we made little jars of soothing salve (see our recipe below). The combination of beeswax, olive oil, calendula, and lavender is gentle and healing. But more important than the scents or the physical prop-erties of the ingredients, I believe, is the work of the season in which the flowers grew; the sun they soaked up; and my memory of the resin on our fingers as we gathered petals that autumn morning. All of that is somehow contained in each little glass jar of golden cream . . . and soaked into our bodies every time we smooth it across our skin.

That very first calendula that I planted on a whim — I love. I love it for its hardiness, for its usefulness, and for the way it connects me back to the work of our garden. As the beloved poet and author Wendell Berry so eloquently states:

“In the work is where my relation to this place comes alive. The real knowledge survives in the work, not in the memory.”

This spring, we will plant calendula again. We will plant the seeds knowingly this time, hoping they will bloom into flowers for salve. But in the work of plant-ing and tending, weeding, watching and gathering we will be connected again to our home place. We will be connected to the soil under our feet and the wonder that comes with the discovery of what we can grow here. We will discover, again, the joy in the work we do with our own hands.

For more of Zane’s writing and gorgeous images, visitwww.schwaigergarden.blogspot.com

CALENDULA SALVE¼ Cup of Dried Calendula Petals20 - 40 Drops of Lavender Essential Oil¼ Cup of Beeswax, melted½ Cup of Olive Oil

Soak a fourth-cup of dried petals (which is a lot more fresh petals than I expected!) in one-half cup of olive oil for two weeks.

Strain the petals out of the olive oil (using cheese-cloth or similar material). Heat the resulting oil just slightly (in a pan on the stove) and add a fourth-cup of melted beeswax and 20-40 drops of lavender essential oil. (We melt our beeswax in a mini crock pot that we reserve just for this purpose.)

Carefully pour into little two-ounce mason jars, and enjoy your lovely honey-colored, sweet-smelling salve all year round.

Kurt Vonnegut tells the anecdotal story of two pieces of yeast conversing in his Breakfast of

Champions:“They were discussing the possible purposes of life

as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excre-ment. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making cham-pagne.”

It was a substance often equated with sin in the Bible. A mysterious agent used in bread and ale, but without much understanding until the last century as to what or how yeast works. Humans figured out how to capture it, but for thousands of years, it remained both omnipresent and unseen.

Today, we buy yeast in granular form at any super-

CAPTURING YEASTHOW YEAST WAS CAPTURED

AND BREAD WAS LEAVENED FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS

market, but how did the Egyptians or the rural bread- and ale-makers of ancient times capture it?

No one is certain when yeast was first discovered as an ingredient used for leavening, but it is likely older than the written language, making it a process utilized for more than 5,000 years.

Though we knew nothing of how it worked, hu-mans quickly figured out how to adapt to its accidental discovery. A practice still in use today, and simpler than a drive to the market to find it.

To capture a bit of yeast (and maybe create a sour-dough start), you’ll need a glass bowl, some flour, a bit of sugar, and water.

Add two cups warm (unchlorinated) water to two cups all-purpose flour and a tablespoon of honey or sugar. Cover the bowl with cheese cloth or a light tea towel and leave out for two to three days. During this time, yeast and bacteria from the atmosphere will be-gin to collect in the mixture. After a few days, if you’ve managed to capture some of our fungal friends, you’ll begin to notice bubbles forming at the surface of the dough.

Once you notice bubbling, stir the mixture once a day for two to three days more. You should start to notice a yeasty aroma.

This process can be done with flour and water alone, or using any variety of ingredients added to al-ter the overall flavor of the dough. The bacteria men-tioned earlier is unique to each region and will afford your starter an equally unique flavor.

Once you’ve captured yeast, you may store your starter in an enclosed container in the refrigerator and “feed it” indefinitely. Some starters have been passed down through families for generations; a truly edible, living legacy. -SG

Permaculture Progress

It’s raining and I want a few cherry tomatoes. Un-fortunately, the previous owner of the house we pur-chased last fall, planted a garden at the far side of the yard - which depending on my mood, will dictate whether I run barefoot out there to retrieve a few ripe tomatoes and chives for this omelette.

The previous owners weren’t silly in their thinking. They chose a location for their garden that receives full sun and even set it up beside a tall fence that will help absorb and hold additional heat.

What they didn’t know, was that within the space once taken up by a hot-tub, they could grow an entire kitchen garden. Not by spreading out, but by winding it up.

We see spirals in galaxies free-floating throughout the universe. These spirals are formed when there is a gravitational pull toward center. We also see spirals in earth-bound snails, who carry their shelter, conve-niently rolled up atop their “feet.” Similarly, rolling a 40 foot garden bed into a six foot diameter with the center pulling up toward full sun exposure, can in-crease efficiency for harvest and surface area for grow-ing, generate greater micro-climate diversity, which in turn promotes a greater variety of plants from sun-lov-ing, to shade-tolerant, arid-tolerant, to moisture-lov-ing, etc. This design also minimizes root competition, and allows for similar canopy sizes to be planted over a larger surface, affording the grower with a good deal of freedom in choosing what to grow within the bed.

Re-locating the garden to a space beside the deck, also meant locating food closer to the place where it is prepared. And with the garden, relocating the com-post bin to the other side of the spiral bed affords an easier route to the compost for food wastes. Throw a chicken tractor in the mix, and you’ve got a great sys-tem for turning food wastes into fertilizer and provid-ing a primary protein source in the eggs or in the meat harvested.

Now, about that omelette...

Samantha and partner, Christopher Graves, operate Healing Tree Farm at the Leelanau Conservancy’s his-toric DeYoung Farm in Elmwood Township. The farm operates as a demonstration permaculture orchard featuring antique and rare varieties of apples. Visit www.healingtreefarm.org for upcoming events.

BIOMIMICRYAND KITCHEN

FUNCTIONALITY

By Samantha Graves, Healing Tree Farm

OR HOW A SPIRAL GARDEN SAVED BREAKFAST

Spring finally arrived, with inexorable yet painfully slow progress. With the melting snow and warming soil came a wave of tasks and decisions: cleaning the hen house and deciding where to put the bedding, lay-ing out the garden and locating the compost pile, and where to put leaves, sticks and the winter’s accumula-tion of egg shells. The management season is here, and it’s all about carbon.

All those leaves, sticks, wood shavings, straw, and food scraps will decompose to form organic matter, brown gold for the soil. Organic matter gives soil its dark color. The rich blackness of the chernozem and the North American prairie soils are due to organic matter, built by the continual death and decomposi-tion of plants and animals. It is magical stuff, and per-haps the most precious substance in an ecosystem. It can hold seven times its weight in water, making soils more resilient to droughts; it holds mineral ions that give soil its fertility; it provides food for the vast com-munity of microorganisms on which plants depend. In short, organic matter makes it possible to grow food, fiber and medicine without inputs that demand huge amounts of energy.

A few years ago, a fel-low member of a perma-culture class suggested that the most appropriate scale at which to measure wealth was the commu-nity. That statement reso-nated with the clarity of a Tibetan singing bowl. I could carry cash, or list assets in a portfolio, but what does this money re-ally represent? The abil-ity to procure resources, a.k.a. “stuff ”, through the work of others. Ultimately, where do those resources come from? Earth. Specifically, most often they come to us via soil.

Through that same permaculture class and my homesteading efforts, I realized that I cannot grow all of my own food, raise enough fiber to make my clothes, or grow timber to build a home. I need to be a part of a community. Even the Rugged Independent Pioneers often romanticized in our American my-thology imported lumber, cloth, nails, iron pots, and numerous other items as soon as they could. Com-munities provide the strength to raise a barn, hunt col-lectively, butcher hogs, and to simply make it through a year. At the heart of every community gathering is, of course, food. Thus, what supports the strength and health of a community is the soil.

It has been said by more erudite writers that the wealth of a people depends on the quality of the soil on which they live. Locally, we need only look at a soil map of Michigan. Sandy, nutrient-poor soils dominate in the north, whereas loamy, more fertile soils domi-nate in the soil. Where are the big cities in Michigan? In the southern part. Southern Michigan economies are rich in agriculture and manufacturing, while

northern economies often depend on the leisure time of the folks in the south who want to take a vacation.

Amazingly, and to the frustration of bankers, com-munities and individuals can add to their wealth by building organic matter (OM) in their soils, then man-aging it in ways that preserve it. Mulching and com-posting add carbon to the soil, increasing OM. Till-age consumes OM, and poisoning soil microbes with pesticides and herbicides inhibits soil’s ability to build more. I’m speculating a bit here, but I’d say many of the old historical farms that were acquired to form the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore were worn out and abandoned due to plowing sandy soils with small amounts of organic matter built over several thousand years. In a generation or two, these soils lost their OM, and their ability to support communities.

In recognition of the importance of OM, I’d like to propose a new measure of wealth. Instead of the Gross Domestic Product, which measures output at the ex-pense of soil and mineral resources, I suggest we adopt the SOMI: the Soil Organic Matter Index. There are several reasons this would be to our advantage.

First, soil OM accounting forces economies in the direction of sustainability. Practices that destroy OM, strip or erode topsoil, or poison soil-building de-composers would finally be viewed as detrimental to community wealth, rather than rewarded as efficient conversion of resources to cash in someone’s pocket. The slash-and-burn, pillage-and-move-on mentality of land use would be held to account for its long-term

effects. Second, “wastes” would

be seen as resources for the replacement or enhance-ment of wealth. Only linear, “efficient” industrial-style practices create waste. In-tegrated systems create ma-terials that can be used by another process. In a simple household example, food scraps from the kitchen are given to chickens and converted to nitrogen-rich manure. This manure is

combined with carbon-rich bedding (straw, leaves, shredded legal documents, etc.) and mixed by the chickens to produce high-quality compost, which is then used to nourish plants that will end up in the kitchen. Plus, you get eggs. There is no “away”; all un-used stuff has to go somewhere. Arrangements like this make the best of it.

Third, in a system that seeks to build soil OM, the value of soil as a carbon sink may be fully realized. As plants photosynthesize, they convert carbon dioxide to carbohydrates. Forms like cellulose linger in the soil, and lignins (a.k.a. wood) can last for hundreds of years. With the help of some fungal partners, other carbo-hydrates are converted to glomalin, a gluey substance that helps bind soil particles together, and gives soil the crumb-like tilth that gardeners and farmers dream about. Research shows that glomalin lasts for decades, if not longer. By building OM in soil, we could begin to drive heat-trapping carbon dioxide back into the soil where it will do more good than harm.

Fourth, soils rich in OM and microorganisms help plants fight off diseases and pests. Dense populations of beneficial and benign microbes confuse and repel pathogenic or plant-eating microbes often by sheer

A NEW MEASURE OF GROWTH

SOIL SUSTAINS COMMUNITYBy Kirk Waterstripe, NMC Instructor and Farmer

Article continues on last page...

If you haven’t heard of Keyline Design, it’s the hot-test new fad sweeping the dance floor! Well... Maybe not. But it is a pretty revolutionary approach to man-aging water across agricultural land to stabilize and build soil, catch and store water, and distribute the water more evenly.

Keylining accomplishes this with a few strategies that harmonize with the existing patterns of the land. It typically includes using a “keyline plow,” “subsoiler,” or “deep-ripper” which has thin hooks that dig eight to 24-inch deep trenches in the soil without flipping or tilling the soil. This process aerates the soil, and in-creases water infiltration during large rain events.

These mini-trenches are dug parallel to the contour lines of the land so that water always flows perpendic-ular to them. Other common strategies include giv-ing the trenches a slight (2%) slope toward the ridges (which tend to be too dry) and away from the valleys (which tend to be too wet). This evens out the water distribution of the land. (Often dams and ponds are incorporated throughout the landscape as well.)

Now that’s a lot of words, and if you’re having trou-ble visualizing all of it, don’t worry. Keep reading for more detailed explanation with illustrations.

I was first introduced to keyline design in the Per-maculture Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison but it was first developed in Australia by farmer and engi-neer, P.A. Yeomans. See the end of the article for re-sources for further study of keyline design. Keyline Design is a system of decision-making (like permac-ulture and holistic management) to guide you through designing a water management strategy that fits the soil, land shape, climate, and other particulars of your site.

You know an approach is moving towards a more natural, holistic approach when it doesn’t try to apply a one-size-fits-all mentality to land management.

Though the application will be different for each site, there are a couple pre-dominant strategies that keylining incorporates. So I’ll cover those in more de-tail with some idealized examples.

As yet, I personally have no “hands-on” experience with keylining, so I’m just a journalist, evangelist, and future experimenter with these ideas and practices.

Keyline Scale of Permanence:The Keyline Design approach advises a designer

to begin analyzing a site by looking at the most per-manent features first, and gradually working towards

the less permanent features. Yeomans developed these categories for initial analysis from most permanent to least:

1. Climate (growing zone, annual temperatures etc)2. Landshape (ridges, valleys, slope etc.)3. Water Supply (annual rainfall, wells, streams, etc.)4. Roads/Access (existing roads, and future needs)5. Trees (existing vegetation)6. Structures (infrastructure, buildings etc.)7. Subdivision Fences8. Soil (depth, fertility etc.)

The features towards the top of the scale will influ-ence the design by adapting the design to these exist-ing features. (Example: working with the existing slope versus labor/resource intensive earthworks) The fea-tures lower down themselves are adapted to meet the needs of the design and overall site goals. (Example: replace existing fencing)

From the Valleys to the RidgesTo understand this concept, you first need a ba-

sic understanding of what contour lines are. A topo-graphic map shows the shape of the land using con-tour lines at a given elevation. So for instance, in the following image, each line is perfectly level across the landscape. Using this tool, we can find the hills and valleys based on the shapes made by the con-tour lines.

Some basic USGS topographic maps are available online, but for a more detailed map, you would need to measure it yourself using a laser level, GPS, or contact the Natural Re-source Conservation Services (NRCS), a branch of the USDA, who will provide the mapping for you as a free service.

As long as the regular laws of physics are in effect, water will always move perpendicular to the contour lines. So assuming there rain falls relatively evenly across the land, the natural tendency is for water to move towards the valleys and away from the ridges as shown here:

One solution would be to plant water loving plants where the water is, and drought tolerant plants where the dry is. But for maximally productive ecosystems, it’s best to distribute that water more evenly across the landscape. And this is what keylining accomplishes brilliantly.

If we dig one single keyline trench or swale perfect-ly on the contour line, it does help soak more water into the hillside, but it doesn’t help much with our dry ridges. A perfectly level catchment will cause the water to spread out evenly across its length and soak it into the soil. But this still favors the valleys.

Yeomans great insight was that you could more evenly distribute the water by making your trenches slope slightly away from the valleys, towards the ridg-es. This will cause the water to flow towards the ridges instead of away from them. As long as the slope is 2% or less (one foot drop over 50 feet of distance), then you also won’t have to worry about erosion from the water movement.

Now, instead of just trenching (subsoiling/keyline plowing) just one contour line, you plowed a trench every foot of land, your water storage capacity has tak-en a huge jump! Plus, having the water deeper down encourages the plant roots to grow deeper, which in turn deepens the soil and strengthens your plants! Don’t you love it when everything just kinda...fits to-gether!?

Increase the Stability and Yield with PondsOften, after the keylining pattern is developed, a

plan is formed for a number of ponds (dams) across the landscape. These increase water storage volume, increase animal habitat, increase ecosystem diver-sity, provide an additional yield of fish, and serve as a source for gravity irrigation which makes your farm more resilient in times of drought.

There are many different types of dams you can in-stall; barrage dam, keypoint dam, valley dam, contour dam, ridge-point dam, saddle dam, turkeys nest dam. Each one has it particu-lar purpose and appropriate appli-cation. In general though, design-ers utilize the slope of the land to help direct water towards the dams especially in the instance of large rain events.

Once the soil has become fully hydrated, it will not absorb any more water, and all that water will move down slope. Capture that water in a pond or dam in-stead of allowing it to flow away.

In addition, ponds build organic matter as bugs and plant matter tend to collect in them. This means that ponds require infrequent dredging, but this organic matter can be used to fertilize upland soil. And the water from ponds is full of life and nutrients, so when you irrigate with pond water, your also delivering a big batch of microorganisms and nutrients to your crops.

Bonus: Swales and Tree SystemsOne of the most exciting applications of Keyline

Design is Mark Shepard’s New Forest Farm, just right in our backyard in Wisconsin. Not only does Mark do subsoiling (keyline plowing) slightly off contour as explained here, but he has also combined perennial polycultures and mob animal grazing into the sys-tem, to create a truly interconnected farm ecosystem. He accomplished this by digging swales about every 60ft and planted these out with Chestnuts, Hazelnuts, Apples, and much more. Then, in between tree rows, he grows perennial and annual veggies like asparagus, peppers, squash, sunflowers and more. His machinery can still access the land by driving along the swale pat-tern. And he grazes his animals along the contour in the alleys as well. For more on what Mark is doing, check out his book, Restoration Agriculture.

Levi Meeuwenberg and partner, Brenda Baran, oper-ate RealEyes Homestead on family land in Elmwood Township. Visit www.realeyeshomestead.com for in-formation on permaculture, holistic nutrition, and upcoming events.

KEYLINE DESIGNAN ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR

PERMACULTURALISTS FARMERS RANCHERS

By Levi Meeuwenberg, RealEyes Homestead

Permaculture Progress

The Permaculture Progress is published by Heal-ing Tree Farm at DeYoung as a way to promote and chronicle permaculture innovation and whole systems design regionally. Contribute your voice to the ongo-ing conversation. Email healingtreefarm@gmail.com

numbers. Others consume the chemicals exuded by plant roots, making the roots “invisible” to the patho-gens. Still others promote the production of defensive compounds in the plants. For years, Organic farm-ers have followed the mantra, “Feed the soil, not the plant”. By doing so they were helping to build these dense, resilient communities of microbes around the roots of their plants.

Thus, by valuing OM, we reduce or eliminate the need for many of the toxic insecticides and fungicides currently used to grow our food. If we were to adopt the Soil Organic Matter Index, what would a wealthy community look like?

Please forgive the use of a less-than-appealing liter-ary device, the itemized list:

- Rainfall would be absorbed by the soil, reducing the use of energy for irrigation,

- Soil erosion and topsoil loss would be virtually eliminated

- Carbon-based stuff formerly known as waste would be recycled into soil OM, so landfills would be much smaller and longer-lasting

- Soil fertility would be maintained within the eco-system and community, reducing or eliminating the need for energy- and fossil fuel-intensive fertilizers

- Gentle soil-handling practices would employ more humans and animals, such as chickens and draft horses

- These employed humans would perform work now seen as valuable, since it contributes directly to the wealth and health of the community, and indirect-ly to the self-esteem of the worker

- Food quality would be high: fresh, local, and nutrient-dense

- Expenses for health care would drop drastically as people consume nutritious food and are

exposed to fewer toxic pesticides- Diversity of plants, insect, and birds would in-

crease as natural communities and processes are al-lowed back in to the food-producing ecosystem

- Coastal dead zones would be eliminated as fertil-izer use is reduced, erosion is eliminated, and nutri-ents are recycled

- The need for imperialistic behavior on the part of nations would be reduced as materials and energy are used more efficiently at home

- Global temperatures my begin to stabilize and even decline as CO2 is converted to carbon in the soil.

This begins to sound like a pretty nice place. An-other beautiful thing about the SOMI is you can keep track of your own OM levels with a simple soil test that is already widely available. In the report, your percent organic matter will be accompanied by a plethora of other numbers and recommendations designed to sell you fertilizer. Don’t fall for them; just focus on the OM. Look for ways to add carbon-rich materials to your soil. Finding them, and finding homes for the abundance of zucchini you grow, will lead you to talk to your neighbors and build your local community.

Together, we can be wealthy and strong, and we will eat well. Oh, and please park the rototiller.

To learn more about how you can improve soil and a personal sense of wealth and well-being, please con-tact Kirk at chickenscratchgardener@gmail.com.

Public forest gardens are both the past and future of food. It makes sense: instead of rows of pine on state land, and grass and a few familiar ornamental trees in our parks and schools, we could and did plant trees and other perennials that provided food, medicine, and fuel in an ecological way for people. Here is a one of the first Europeans’ descriptions of the landscape along the Detroit River prior to the European con-quest. It’s worth quoting at length:

“This river or strait of the seas is scattered over,” he writes, “...in its plains and on its banks, with large clusters of trees surrounded by charming meadows....On the banks and round about the clusters of timber there is an infinite number of fruit trees, chiefly plums and apples. They are so well laid out that they might be taken for orchards planted by the hand of a gardener.

“On all sides the vine is seen; there are with some bitter and rough grapes, - others whose berries are ex-tremely large and plump. There are also white and red grapes, the skins of which are very thin, full of good juice. The latter are the best, and I have taken care to select some of these plants and have them planted near the fort. I have no doubt that, by cultivating it as they do in France, this vine will produce good grapes and consequently good wine.

I have observed there nearly twenty different kinds of plums...The apples are of medium size, too acid. There are also a number of cherry trees, their fruit is not very good. In places there are mulberry trees which bear big black mulberries; this fruit is excel-lent and refreshing. There is also a very large quantity of hazel nuts and filberts. There are six kinds of wal-nuts; these trees is good for furniture and gun-stocks. There are also stretches of chestnuts, chiefly towards Lake Erie. All the fruit trees in general are loaded with their fruit; there is reason to believe if these trees were grafted, pruned and well cultivated, their fruit would be much better, and that it might be made good fruit.”

Imagine all of the food that these Native American forest gardeners got to eat from this area year after year. There was almost certainly enough food that oth-er animals could eat away, too. The people that created and tended this forest garden did all of this without artificial poisonous pesticides or fertilizers. Most of the fruit probably didn’t look like the fruit you get in grocery stores, and thank God for that. Think about that lunchroom dry shiny Red Delicious that you took a bite out of and threw away because it was terrible. Don’t worry about washing it either (unless you’re near a road or some other source of toxicity)

Presently, public forest gardens are beginning to pop up around the country, the most ambitious and well-known being the Beacon Hill Food Forest in Se-attle. Large portions of the planet outside of our coun-try have forest gardens that provide food. I lived in Terraba, an indigenous territory in Costa Rica, for a few months in 2011 and just about every tree planted

EDIBLE TRAILSCREATING PUBLIC FOOD FORESTS

ALONG THE TART-LEELANAU AND BEYOND

By Jonathan Aylward, GT Edible Trails Project

in the town/territory provided edible fruits or nuts that were a delicious and liberating treat. People there have their private property, but the harvest from the public landscape was bountiful. In this place, people enjoy food straight from the source without any guilt about “Is this my food? Is this your food? Who do I pay for this?” A direct connection with the Earth as the source of their food gift. If you owe anyone, you owe the water, soil, sun, and air! I hope to be part of a community of people that embraces and spread this common sense around our neighborhoods and towns.

This summer, Grand Traverse residents will create the first public forest gardens in the region. Two sites are planned, both located about two miles northwest of Traverse City along the TART Trail. A group began meeting last fall to make plans, and in the spring part-nered with Traverse Area Recreational Trails (TART), Inc., the Leelanau Conservancy, and the Institute for Sustainabile Living Art and Natural Design (IS-LAND). In May, more than $5000 was raised from the community for the project through the crowd funding website IndieGoGo.

From that fund raiser, we are planting two public forest gardens along the TART Trail at the Leelanau Conservancy’s Historic DeYoung Natural Area, and ½ mile south along the trail adjacent to RealEyes Home-stead, across from the Orchard Creek development. The adjacent residents to the sites, Samantha and Christopher Graves of Healing Tree Farm at DeYoung and Levi Meeuwenber and Brenda Baren of RealEyes Homestead, have already begun turning their proper-ties into privately run forest gardens and worked on the designs along with the project’s co-founder Stuart Campbell, Stuart Campbell whose Traverse City-based landscaping company, Perennial Harvest, specializes in edible and medicinal native perennial plants.

The Grand Traverse region is a perfect place to do this. A lot of fruit can grow here, and it already is. We’ve got lots of open, mostly unused grass in pub-lic parks, schoolyards, and biking/hiking path ease-ments around that could gift future generations, and ourselves in a few years, an abundance of apples, pe-cans, and blueberries. We’re already paying someone to regularly mow and fertilize the lawn, plant flowers, and mulch the beds; why not adopt these spaces as a community and/or pay someone to install an edible landscape and then keep them going instead. Hard to imagine preferring lawns and chemical run-off to di-verse edible organic landscapes.

As a community gift for surpassing the crowdfund-ing goal, the partnering organizations will be present-ing a free concert parade with Seth Bernard along the TART Trail on October 5th at 3pm, starting at the DeYoung Natural Area off Cherry Bend Road.

Join the team and help us get this going! Site prepa-ration begins this July! To join in the fun, contact Jona-than at GTEdibleTrails@gmail.com.

“Keep your friends close; and your farmers closer.”